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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22522204">Go And Remember Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/argyle4eva/pseuds/argyle4eva'>argyle4eva</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wise As Serpents, Innocent As Doves [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, Gratuitous Poetry, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Taking Historical Names in Vain, ineffable valentines, ineffablevalentines</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:01:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22522204</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/argyle4eva/pseuds/argyle4eva</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale has a new literary project. </p><p>Written for Mielpetit/mielpetite's <a href="https://mielpetite.tumblr.com/post/190569199017/mielpetite-mielpetite-okay-people-thank-you"> Ineffable Valentines prompt list</a>, Day 3 - Poetry/Pillow Talk. </p><p>Follows from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22074289">“Of Lists, Lazy Days, and Bragging Rights,”</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22270033">“On the Diplomacy of Demons,”</a>  South Downs Cottage fic.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wise As Serpents, Innocent As Doves [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535606</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Ineffable Valentines 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Go And Remember Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Crowley yawned and turned off his phone, then lay still for a few moments, phone still loosely held in the palm of his hand, too content to move. He was on his side in bed, the length of his spine pressed up against Aziraphale’s legs, familiar, solid, and safe.</p><p>Aziraphale was sitting against the headboard, propped with pillows, writing steadily in his notebook, the pen making soothing scratching sounds.</p><p>“Should I turn off the light, love?” Aziarpahle asked, pausing for a moment, referring to the bedside lamp on his side. The one on Crowley’s side was already off.</p><p>“Nah, it doesn’t bother me. And it’s easier on your eyes.” Aziraphale could read and write in the dark, of course, “dark” being a relative term when one was a supernatural being, but their physical forms were best adapted to normal human light levels.</p><p>Crowley mustered enough energy to reach over and set his phone on the bedside table, before rolling and resting his cheek on Aziraphale’s thigh. Soft and warm, friendly padding over hidden strength. He inhaled deeply, wallowing in Aziraphale’s familiar, clean scent; it seeped directly into his back-brain and belly to loosen any remaining knots. He thrummed happily in his throat and draped his arm across Aziraphale’s knees.</p><p>Gentle fingers stroked absently through his hair. Crowley thought he might just dissolve into happy goo and sink into the mattress.</p><p>He cracked open one eye to look at Aziraphale, as best he could given the angle. Mostly he saw the leather-bound notebook laid out in Aziraphale’s lap, and the pen patiently scrolling words across the page. A regular fountain pen, not a feather quill, so it was something ordinary and not a bit of magical research.</p><p>The page turned, and Crowley could make out words – Greek? - already written on the left-hand page; the right was blank, though Aziraphale’s pen went to work immediately on it. A translation, it looked like – Aziraphale generating his own facing-page text as he went.</p><p>“You’ve been working on that a while,” Crowley commented, less out of a pressing desire to make conversation, and more because his brain-mouth filter was largely turned off at the moment. “What is it?”</p><p>“The complete works of Sappho,” Aziraphale told him, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.</p><p>“Wait, what?” Crowley frowned muzzily and tried to bring a few more brain cells online. “Those are lost, aren’t they?”</p><p>“For most of the world, but not for me. I have the complete set. I got them new, back in the day.”</p><p>Crowley frowned and levered himself up on his elbow. Now those papyrus scrolls Aziraphale’d been fiddling with made perfect sense. “You mean you’ve been sitting on the complete works of Sappho for <em>two and a half millennia</em> and never told anyone?”</p><p>Aziraphale <em>hrmph</em>ed. “It’s never been anyone’s business.”</p><p>“Why the sudden new interest?” Crowley asked, lowering himself back down to the mattress. “Is it because we were talking, earlier?”</p><p>“Partly that, and partly the da Vinci exhibition we went to. Seeing so many people receiving so much pleasure from great historical works . . . well, I realized I’d been a bit selfish all these years, and I decided it might be time to work on an, er, re-release. Of Sappho’s poetry. I think the social climate is appropriate, or at least more appropriate than it’s been. And it would be a fitting way to remember her, sharing her words, even if her music is lost.”</p><p>“So how are you going to do it?” Crowley asked, curious. “Find a suitable academic and hand over the scrolls?”</p><p>“Absolutely not!” Aziraphale gave him a scandalized look over the rims of his reading glasses. “I’m not giving away my <em>books</em>. I’m going to generate a copy, something plausibly early-medieval, I think, and leak that. Sneak it into a collection somewhere and let it be found.”</p><p>“A forgery, you mean.” A slow grin spread across Crowley’s face. “You’re going to fake a medieval manuscript, to get the real information out there.”</p><p>Aziraphale tapped his chin with the end of his pen, thoughtfully. “A bit of a challenge with the materials, to make sure they’ll stand up to dating analysis, and I’ll have to come up with a convincing chain of provenance, but I think it should be do-able.”</p><p>If anyone could fake a medieval manuscript, it would be Aziraphale, Crowley had to admit. He could probably even do it without using magic.</p><p>“Anyway, I thought it would be a nice retirement project, among the others.”</p><p>“One of the biggest literary bombshells of the century, probably, and it’s a nice retirement project.” Crowley snickered. “I like your priorities.” He craned his neck, but unless he sat up, he wasn’t going to be able to read over Aziraphale’s shoulder, and he was still relaxed enough he wanted to keep sleep an option. <em>Hmm.</em></p><p>“Do you mind if I slip into something a little more . . . serpentine?” he asked.</p><p>“No, of course not, love. Just mind the pressure. There’s a difference between hugging and constriction.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know I got carried away that one time.” Crowley was still embarrassed about it.</p><p>“It would have been flattering, if I’d been able to breathe,” Aziraphale, admitted, running his fingers affectionately through Crowley’s hair one last time.</p><p>Crowley wriggled out from under the covers, the wriggle getting more pronounced as he went, becoming literal as he morphed into serpent form: long, gleaming coils of onyx and garnet draping themselves across Aziraphale’s legs, wedge-shaped head looping up and around Aziraphale’s shoulders to rest on his chest – a perfect vantage for reading.</p><p>"You make a lovely neck pillow,” Aziraphale told him, leaning back with an appreciative sigh. He caught Crowley’s chin with his fingers, and Crowley allowed his head to be raised for a kiss on the top of his armored skull, before being gently set back in place.</p><p>“Hhwhy modern English?” Crowley asked, skimming the translated page. His voice was more of a breathy whisper than usual, since he didn’t have a human throat and ribcage for resonance, but he was perfectly understandable. “You hhwon’t be using that for your fforgery.” His tongue flicked with interest.</p><p>“Oh, just habit,” Aziraphale told him. “As long as I’m transcribing it off the scrolls and into something easier to handle, I might as well. Besides, it’s fun. In fact, here’s a passage I think you’ll like.” He flipped back a few pages and began:</p><p>
  <em>Again love, the limb-loosener, rattles me</em>
  <br/>
  <em>bittersweet,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>irresistible,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>a crawling beast . . .</em>
</p><p>Crowley snorted, as best a snake can. “Very funny, angel. Besssides, I can read the original.” He flicked Aziraphale’s wrist affectionately with his tongue, as close as he could get to a kiss.</p><p>“Then let me know if you spot any mistakes,” Aziraphale told him, putting pen to paper again.</p><p>“That’sss me, jusst your proofreader,” Crowley said, the eyeroll implied, if not physically possible at the moment. He dutifully followed the path of Aziraphale’s pen across the page, however, until the steady rise and fall of Aziraphale’s breath, the smooth beat of his heart, and his radiant warmth lulled Crowley back to his former relaxation, and then beyond.</p><p>Aziraphale smiled when the golden eyes drifted shut (Crowley, not being a natural serpent to begin with, insisted on having eyelids) and a delicate, wheezing snore began.</p><p>Poetry and peace were the order of the night, then, straight through till dawn.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Aziraphale quotes  Sappho's Fragment 15, <a href="https://uh.edu/~cldue/texts/sappho.html">as translated by Julia Dubnoff</a>; the title is from Fragment 19.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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